The Truth About Options Trading?

There is a lot of hype surrounding options trading, and for good reason, it’s a good way make a lot of money fast, or can be used to grow your capital consistently month after month.

There’s also a lot of hype about how complicated it is and why you need to spend thousands of dollars on options trading education before you get started. Needless to say this last statement usually comes from trading seminar companies trying to sell your their trading course on options.

Lets cover a few of the basics about options trading and set you straight about a few important points. Firstly yes it is true that you can make a lot of cash trading options, but of course you can also lose just as fast.

When trading stocks your leverage is 1:1, if you go on margin you can get get 1:2 leverage, but thats about it. With options it is not quite as straight forward to calculate the leverage but generally speaking you can get between 1:5 and 1:10 when you buy an option on a stock, or ETF.

So with 1:10 leverage, when the stock increases by 5% your option can increase by approx 50%, and this can happen in just a few days, this is why swing trading strategies using options on stocks is so popular.

However the downside is that the reverse can happen, if the stock drops by 5% your option can also drop by 50%, at which point you may want to close the trade and save some of your option value, it really depends on what your stop loss and risk management plan is.

What I’ve described above is called directional option trading where you are betting on the getting the direction of the stock movement correct, this is highly speculative. Options can also be used in option strategies which are much more non-directional, such as covered call trades, credit spreads and Iron Condors. In these trades there is much lower dependance on getting the stock direction correct, but it still matters.

So should you learn to trade options?, in my opinion you should not do directional option trades until you become very good at trading stocks. This is because you really need to be very precise with your entry and exit strategy and trading plan, and be very good at technical analysis.

Whereas if you want to do non directional option trades you don’t need to be such an experianced stock trader to be successful, but of course it does not hurt either.

Learning how to trade options is a very good skill to have, but don’t rush into it and blow out your account. Make sure that you get a good options trading education before you start, and also make sure that you have a very solid stock trading education as well, such one from Top Dog Trading Review.





Compare___________________________________________________


The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings Enhanced Edition


The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings Enhanced Edition


$34.50


The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings is a single player Role Playing Game (RPG), and sequel to the critically acclaimed 2007 PC game, The Witcher. Based on the short stories and novels of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, Assassins Of Kings continues the adventures of the Medieval monster hunter for hire, Geralt of Rivia, and his searc…

The Truth About Trading: Now You Too Can Stop Losing and Start Earning. How to Make Money in the Stock Market


The Truth About Trading: Now You Too Can Stop Losing and Start Earning. How to Make Money in the Stock Market



This title describes the author’s journey into the world of the financial markets and the pitfalls that beset anyone looking to create a side income or replace their job by trading. It draws from the author’s experiences with high grade commercial trading systems and distils them into the one truth that dispels all the false claims made by most gurus and trading system sellers luring newcomers to …


The 21 Irrefutable Truths of Trading: A Trader¿s Guide to Developing a Mind to Win


The 21 Irrefutable Truths of Trading: A Trader¿s Guide to Developing a Mind to Win


$22.50


Psychology is 80% of the high-stakes trader’s game. And within the mind of any successful trader exist surprisingly similar emotions and psychological beliefs. The 21 Irrefutable Truths of Trading introduces these values and beliefs, then explains how traders can and must work to understand and harness these beliefs, and gain the psychological edge necessary to win in today’s all-or-nothing tradin…

The Guts and Glory of Day Trading: True Stories of Day Traders Who Made (or Lost) $1,000,000


The Guts and Glory of Day Trading: True Stories of Day Traders Who Made (or Lost) $1,000,000


$22.63


Jump Into the Day-Trading Trenches and Sharpen Your Own Survival SkillsEvery battle has its winners and losers. Every day, thousands of day traders take their battle positions in front of their computers to go head to head against the world’s best, and most powerful, trading institutions. There are casualties—many casualties. But there are also victories—moments when an individual trader…

_________________________________________________________

 Mail this post

StumbleUpon It!
Comments are closed.

Switch to our mobile site